Tag: #atozchallenge

Contributed by Laura F.

When I was in school (long ago now), a classmate claimed that anyone who went a full year without having sex automatically became a born-again virgin.  I won’t comment on the validity (or invalidity) of this claim, but I want to connect it to something I heard from another classmate in another context.  She remarked that one of her professors had told her that he envied students who still had the experience of reading Anna Karenina for the first time ahead of them.  Of course, it would be possible to substitute any book for Anna Karenina.  There are videos on Youtube by booktubers who lament that they have forever lost the ability to read – oh, the Harry Potter series, to give one example – for the first time.  How did they lose this ability?  By reading the series, of course.  The first time, it appears, is always the best time.

But is it true that we each get only one first time?  Recently I’ve re-read a few books and I was astounded by what a “first time” experience each of these re-readings was.  No, I don’t mean that my increased maturity, greater experience, and expanded consciousness :>) led me to new and brilliant insights into what I was reading.  I wish!

I understand that there are people who proclaim that enduring a painful breakup/becoming a parent/undergoing a serious illness/[insert important life experience of your choice here] has given them an entirely new perspective on their favorite books.  That is NOT what I am describing.

What I mean, somewhat embarrassingly, is that the books I was re-reading seemed entirely new to me because I didn’t remember a dang thing about them.  Oh, PRIOR to picking them up again, I would have said that I remembered them.  I could have named the major characters and identified significant aspects of their personalities. I had a pretty solid grasp of the plot, or at least I thought I did.  I had vivid recollections of one or two particular incidents.  I wasn’t expecting any surprises.

But it turned out that on a sentence-by-sentence, page-by-page, scene-by-scene, chapter-by-chapter basis, I had one surprise after another.   Eventually, the surprises ceased to surprise me because I no longer had any expectation of recognizing anything I read.

Now, admittedly, these were all books I had read years ago.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have expected them to seem familiar upon re-reading.  Nonetheless, despite being in what a lot of people apparently consider the fortunate position of being able to read the same book “for the first time” twice, I’m not sure that I consider it quite so fortunate.  After all, what does it mean to tell people I’ve read a certain book if I have so little memory of it?  What does it mean to tell MYSELF that I’ve read that book?

I wonder now whether I should turn to another “A” word”: annotation.  I’ve never been one of those people who mark up their books with all kinds of underlining, highlighting, and marginal notes.  I’m used to reading books that I’ve taken out of the library and libraries prefer that patrons return books in the same condition they found them.  But I do own some books, including quite a few that I’ve never read.  If I annotated those books as I read them, would I have only one “first time” experience with them?  Would I retain more memory of the books once those books have returned to the shelf?

Despite what booktubers might wish for, despite what that professor envied his students for, I think I’d rather be an experienced reader instead of a perpetually first-time reader.  Maybe it’s time to make highlighters and other annotation tools my new best friends.

Contributed by Laura F.

“W” is for “walking but it is also for “writing” and in this, my final post in the A-Z Blog challenge, I want to pass along and recommend the best piece of writing advice that I have ever received, which is to use walking (or any other physical activity, no matter how slight) as a stimulus for writing.

Based on publication records, there appear to be some fortunate individuals in this world who never experience even the briefest difficulty in getting words on the page (or on the computer screen).  I’ve read Stephen King’s On Writing and in that book he claims that he gladly – GLADLY!! – writes every single day of every year.  Oh, yes, once or twice he told pesky interviewers that he didn’t write on his birthday or on Christmas day but that was only because they refused to believe him when he told them the truth.  The truth is that he is eager to sit down and write every day and he DOES sit down and write every day, including his birthday, including Christmas Day.  He writes EVERY day.  Every.  Single.  Day.  He writes every day without any inner forces holding him back, whispering in his ear that he’s too tired, too distracted, that dishes need washing and the dog needs a walk and he’d better finish reading that library book today because it’s due tomorrow.

I can only say, “Mr. King, I salute you. This consistency is part of what makes you Stephen King while I . . . . am not.”

Of course, I don’t want to be Stephen King.  The very word “horror” fills me with, well, horror.  I’ve never read anything of King’s aside from On Writing, and I don’t intend to read anything else of his.

However, I often wish I could be as effortlessly diligent about my own writing as he is about his.  No matter how satisfied I am with my plot, no matter how much I love my characters, no matter how much I’m delighted that I have written once I’ve done it, starting is almost always hard for me.  Sometimes it’s so hard that an entire day goes by without my advancing in my latest project.  Or two days.  Or a three.  Or a week.  Or . . . . .  I don’t want to admit publicly how long I can go without writing.

Yet, even when I find the writing process most difficult, walking stirs my creative juices.  Often I have walked out whatever inhibition kept me from my writing desk.  Once I walked, I wrote.  The equation has often been as simple as that.

Of course, many, many writers have recommended walking as a spur to creativity.  Julia Cameron, the creator of the Artist’s Way, devoted an book to the subject.  Yet Cameron insists upon the need to walk outdoors, and I regard that insistence as a serious mistake.  For those who love the outdoors and for whom it is possible to walk outdoors, Godspeed!  For me, indoor walking is best, preferably with some of my favorite music further lifting my spirits and stimulating my imagination.  I live in a climate where it is almost always too cold or too hot to walk outdoors, even if one is an ardent fan of nature, which I am NOT.  What suits me is walking in my apartment, in shopping malls, even in the stacks of a university library.  Walking is the magic, not walking outside.

At times when physical limitations have made it impossible to walk, then less taxing physical activities have helped me get back to writing.  Any movement, even simply the hand movements of craftwork, have often inspired and motivated me to return to my current manuscript.

Whether my feet move or my hands move, I almost always end a movement session with fresh enthusiasm for my writing.  Perhaps you have had similar experiences.  Perhaps you can share other suggestions for those of us who, unlike Stephen King, do not find it easy to write every day.